When Family becomes the Enemy
When Family becomes the Enemy
Today I learned that my stepfather is planning on becoming a landlord. I’m absolutely devastated.
My mom visited me today and as we were talking I told her how I planned to move out of the province I live in, as at this point it’s a lost cause. She agreed with me and told me she planned to move back to the Azores with my stepdad, of course. She then mentioned how they’d be financially well off due to my stepfather wanting to set up businesses. I didn’t know what this business was until she told me how they wanted to make money off of renting properties out.
She told me this in relation to how when she and him are gone (dead) their house and the one I live in will be mine to do with as I please. Because the house I live in is a property they own she made reference to other properties they would invest in in the future.
I don’t think my mom really understands this whole ordeal but my stepfather definitely does and it breaks my heart that he would resort to doing something so evil. I’m incredibly lucky that my parents were more than willing to help me move out of a horrible living situation by paying the down payment for a home while I pay the mortgage. Most people can afford mortgages, it’s the down payment that stops anyone from being able to afford to buy. So I’m lucky and incredibly privileged. I feel like I don’t have the right to be angry at them since they’ve done so much for me but at the same time it hurts to know they want to exploit people for profit.
I didn’t know what to say to her. Was I supposed to lecture her on the nature of landlording? I don’t think she deserves that since she’s never been savvy with this stuff. Do I lecture my stepfather? Maybe, but he’d fight me hard on that and it might screw me over. My stepdad has always been a hyper individualist and has little to no hope in the world improving, anytime I’ve talking about dense housing and better public transit he treats it like a childish daydream. He also hates unions so there’s that. It makes sense why he’d want to be a landlord but I don’t want to be tied to such a deplorable act.
But I look over this whole thing and ask: Does it make me a hypocrite?
As a communist, but I’m living in a house bought by my parents. I’ll have landlords as parents too. What then? Am I disqualified? I’m in genuine distress over this whole thing. I’m scared and confused and I don’t know what to do but cry.
Does anyone have any advice? Anything at all? I feel so alone…
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Thinking of people in terms of good and evil will only lead you to oversimplification and dehumanization of others. Your family is not the enemy. Your family is your family. And it sounds like they care about you.
Systemic issues are far more important than individual issues
You’re right, I guess I was focused on the act being evil rather than my parents themselves I also tend to use hyperbolic language to express myself. I love my parents and they love me it’s just hard to grapple with the fact that they’d want to do that. But everyone’s responses are helping me come down from this anxiety attack.
My parents are petty landlords too. They're also exploited workers as well. They simultaneously occupy both classes and it's a factor that prevents them from seeing things clearly. And worse, they don't actually make returns on their investments and havent since they started renting out property years ago. They should see how rigged things are by now but "temporary embarassed millionaires" and all that. I get your frustration.
But also, realize how normalized and propagandized it is for everyone to be a landlord or entrepreneur now. In that sense your parents and my parents are victims of that. Like you said, they're just trying to have an easier life and aren't heady about this political stuff like we are.
While there is an exploited class and an exploiting class, it's not necessarily indicative of where someone's ultimate interests lie. Plenty of petty bourgeois circumstancially have more in common with workers and plenty of labor aristocrats have an individual stake in preserving capitalism.
Let ideology be a guide for you, but don't treat it like a cult. If you let it dictate who you love or who you're friends with, you're gonna be pretty miserable and ultimately you'll find yourself creating more divisions, not healing them.